Social Media

Facebook App Helps Musicians Collect Unclaimed Royalties

About $5.3 million in unclaimed royalties are floating around, just out of the grasp of deserving artists. RootMusic, maker of the Facebook app BandPage, teamed with performance rights non-profit SoundExchange to put that money in the right hands.

Musicians garner royalties whenever their music is streamed on the Internet or played on digital satellite radio or cable music channels. SoundExchange, an organization enlisted by Congress to distribute digital performance royalties, collects those royalties and distributes them to bands. However, bands have to be registered with SoundExchange in order to get the cash. Unfortunately, some of those bands are unaware of the money they're making and don't register.

To right that wrong, RootMusic gave SoundExchange a list of artists who have used its Facebook app, BandPage, so that the organization could connect with any artists with unclaimed royalties. How many bands were missing out on the dollars? 7,462 out of the 150,000 bands using BandPage. That's a lot of Ramen and guitar picks.

A lot of apps like BandPage are cropping up, including MySpace's new offering. This partnership definitely will make RootMusic more attractive to bands choosing which service to use.

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